Prison movie

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The prison film was originally a pure sub-genre of the classic gangster film , which in turn is subordinate to the crime film . Since the 1970s, prison film has increasingly incorporated aspects of other genres, such as action films , adventure films and sports films . As a place of action, the prison is usually an expression of a change in the story of the protagonists: either a place of purification or a continuation of the criminal career under the changed conditions of a prison. The compulsory conditions of imprisonment are decisive for the action-defining prison situation: isolation, lack of self-determination and dehumanization.

history

The prison film was also made during the first heyday of gangster films in the early 1930s. Real prisons often served as filming locations for prison films, for example in 20,000 years in Sing Sing by Michael Curtiz (1933). In the 1970s, prison films increasingly detached themselves from the subjects of gangster films and included aspects of adventure films ( Papillon , Franklin J. Schaffner , 1973) or the retelling of real experiences ( 12 noon - Midnight Express , Alan Parker , 1978) Foreground.

The prison was also a popular setting in the exploitation film of the 1970s. Particularly in the women's prison film , aspects of sex, torture and violence were mixed up in an audience-effective manner, for example in Jonathan Demmes The Prison of the Lost Girls (1974) or The House of Whips ( Pete Walker , 1977). In the 1990s there was a boom in prison film with Frank Darabont's The Convicted (1994) and Tony Kaye's American History X (1998), which brought back psychological depth to the genre. The 1993 action film Fortress starring Christopher Lambert is set in a futuristic high-tech jail.

From 1997 to 2007, the TV series Hinter Gittern - Der Frauenknast ran on the private broadcaster RTL . The Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black , which is set in a women's prison, has existed since 2013 .

The 2010 film Picco tells, based on real events, everyday life in a youth prison. The French-Canadian film Dog Pound (2010) by director Kim Chapiron, a remake of the 1979 prison film Scum , is also dedicated to the subject of youth arrest .

Camp films such as Schindler's List (1993) by Steven Spielberg , who is set in a Nazi concentration camp , and The Camp - We Went Through Hell or Papillon (1973) with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman must be distinguished from a pure prison film .

Motives and themes

The prison film often pursues a socially critical approach, for example when the prison with its inhumane conditions is staged as a contrast to liberal society ( Hunt for James A. , Mervyn LeRoy 1932) or the stressful conditions of imprisonment cause the prisoner to be brutalized ( Die Verrohung des Franz Blum , Reinhard Hauff , 1973).

A popular theme in the prison film is the prison rebellion , the cinematic implementation of which ranges from reportage-like documentation such as Don Siegel's Terror in Block 11 (1954) to surrealist-satirical allegories on the subject of violence such as in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994).

The breakout film often addresses the exertion of the human will to escape the prison conditions by escaping. Often the main character here is an unjustly convicted person, in order to allow the viewers an easier identification. These include Jacques Becker's The Hole (1960), Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967), Don Siegel Escape from Alcatraz (1979) and Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

More film titles

Documentaries

literature

  • James Robert Parish: Prison Pictures from Hollywood. Jefferson, 1991.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marcus Stiglegger : Prison film in: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Reclams Sachlexikon des Films. 2nd edition, 2007. Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co, Stuttgart. P. 281ff.